MCC criticised for lack of efforts to tackle malaria

Mangalore City Corporation is reportedly spending money on personnel who do not have the qualiﬁcation to collect blood samples from people. File photo.

886 cases recorded in the city in June

Doctors and social activists criticised the manner in which the Mangalore City Corporation had been tackling malaria in the city.

In June 886 cases of the disease had been recorded in the city.

During a meeting chaired by Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim on Tuesday, doctors and social activists pointed out to the lack of supervision of the work of 42 personnel from private agency which had been assigned the task of malaria source reduction and collection of blood smears.

Raising the issue, Srinivas Kakkilaya, a doctor who was part of the erstwhile MCC’s malaria control committee, said the MCC was spending Rs. 5.5 lakh on 42 personnel from private security agency who do not have requisite qualification for destroying sources of malaria and in collection of blood smears of people.

“MCC itself says it does not have any details about the education qualification of these personnel. How can the corporation spend money on persons not qualified to do the task?” he asked. These personnel have been employed for the last two years and yet there was spurt in malaria cases. There was no officer to oversee the way these personnel functioned, Dr. Kakkilaya said. He also wanted steps to prevent persons with malaria flying abroad.

‘No continuity’

Former Dean of Kasturba Medical College K.R. Shetty said there was lack of continuity in the programmes implemented in control of malaria. “I have been seeing it since 1963 when the first case of malaria was detected in Mangalore.

I was also part of the malaria Control Committee. There is no continuity in the programmes because of frequent change of officials dealing with malaria prevention.”

Activist Suresh Shetty expressed his displeasure over poor rate of reporting of malaria cases. Of the 82 malaria checking centres, including 32 hospitals, only 32 were reporting cases of malaria.

Mr. Ibrahim asked MCC Commissioner Ajith Kumar Hegde S. to come up with a system for reporting cases of malaria.